The week went by pretty quickly. I realize I need to take better care of my health. It started Friday and I had stomache pains, some possibilities would be the stress of deadlines or maybe its just something I ate. Regardless, due to that I couldn’t go out for a picnic today as I had to constantly use the restroom. I feel worried I won’t be able to meet deadlines, hard or soft. I took a big risk going from a coding title or a techncial writer title. It makes it difficult to switch back so I feel motivated to commit to it.
The week
This week has been brutaly long. All work and no play quite literaly. It felt so long, yet quick due to approaching deadlines. I don’t expect it to be as brutal, as most of the time was spent onboarding and not writing. Following the startup culture, I’m used to working 996. I finished a couple more edits today to make sure I’m on track to meet the first two deadlines. Issues I’ve felt were forced commenting and liking of posts. I understand why as we need to gauge organic content. But creating half assed comments due to obligation hurt me mentally, coupled with a timer and @pings when I haven’t done it. I’m open to liking, commenting and sharing take a bit more toll out of me. I’ve heard from them it’s temporary until we have a real following, so I hope to be able to adapt to the culture put more thought into my comments.
Worries
True be told, I’m not the best writer. When I saw the release schedule and had two back to back articles on the same day part of me panicked. Originally the quota was two articles a week, as its technical and I have to research the topic I was able to talk it down to one per week. I couldn’t get everything though as there was the back to back to publish 4 technical articles.
Step 1: Transparency
I need to tell my employer. I like writing these posts because it helps me with transparency which I value above all else when working. It gives me the courage and medium to organize my thoughts. That being said, I’m scared of the backlash if I decline the 4 articles to release 3. I started midmonth, so I didn’t have the first week to think and write. I do feel burned out after completion of one article and want to ask for a writing break for the next day at least.
Step 2: Adaptability
Depending on the response, I already know the toll its taken on my mental and physical health. I hope it’s temporary and that my body will adapt to the changes, like the first three days of Supersize Me. I love the company, people, cuture, and mission so wouldn’t consider quitting. I’m more worried if I hold it in, then long term effects, such as more consistent diarea and discomfort will ruin the vision, quality and ability to work.
Step 3: Assistance
No man is an island, so when in trouble I’m going to search for help. I’ll work enough to gather sick hours to see a psysician to get a checkup. Ideally, we’ll find more technical writers to help out and have a more friendly schedule (1 article per 2 week, with a large enough team).
Occasional Destressing
Part of my destressing is watching interesting videos. I watched a video today about “Can you really tell if a kid is lying” by Kang Lee, and saw that a transthermal optical imaging technology can scan the face and can calculate anxiety, stress, likes and dislikes. It sounds neat and I would like to run a test on my face throughout the many stages of the week.
Impact of Working
I had to cancel a picnic I was looking forward to due to these health issues. That’s why I have time to write this post today. I feel that in order to keep on moving forward I’ll need to do more of this posting. Making technical articles are tough because it’s about learning, writing about what you learned, then rephrasing it to teach others. These make it much harder if you’ve never known anything about the topic or if its complex and difficult to condense.